we are getting .txt file but not getting proper alignment - php

Question

we are getting the following texfile_screenshot1.JPG when we are exporting data to .txt file
we need output which is shown in texfile_screenshot2.JPG
following is the code
$myFile = "user_password.txt";
$fh = fopen($myFile, 'a') or die("can't open file");
$newline ="\r\n";
fwrite ($fh,$newline);
$stringData1 = $_POST['uname1']." "." "." " ;
fwrite($fh, $stringData1);
$stringData1 =$_POST['password1']." "." "." ";
fwrite($fh,$stringData1);
$stringData1 = $_POST['email1']." "." "." ";
fwrite($fh, $stringData1);
fclose($fh);

Answer 1

You need to use tabs (\t) instead of spaces to get column-like alignement
Here is your example updated
$myFile = "user_password.txt";
$fh = fopen($myFile, 'a') or die("can't open file");
$newline ="\r\n";
fwrite ($fh,$newline);
$stringData1 = $_POST['uname1']."\t" ;
fwrite($fh, $stringData1);
$stringData1 =$_POST['password1']."\t";
fwrite($fh,$stringData1);
$stringData1 = $_POST['email1']."\t";
fwrite($fh, $stringData1);
fclose($fh);

Answer 2

You need to print a "\t" (tab) instead of three concatenated spaces.
Like so
$stringData1 = $_POST['uname1']."\t";
fwrite($fh, $stringData1);
EDIT: This may not always work though, if your the difference in length of the strings are more than one tab. If you're creating a tab delimited file, this will work. If you want some sort of column-view this is not a good approach.. (another edit; paxdiablos answer is better for the second method.)

Answer 3

All you seem to be doing is appending three spaces to the end of each field. Perhaps you should be doing something more like:
$stringData1 = substr($_POST['uname1'] . " ",0,14) . " ";
fwrite($fh, $stringData1);
In other words, make sure the field is 14 characters or more, the truncate it to 14.
Or better yet, use the printf facilities:
fprintf ($fh, "%-14s ", $_POST['uname1']);
In fact, your entire segment could be compressed to something like:
$myFile = "user_password.txt";
$fh = fopen($myFile, 'a') or die("can't open file");
fprintf ($fh, "\r\n%14s %14s %14s", $_POST['uname1'], $_POST['password1'],
$_POST['email1']);
fclose($fh);

Answer 4

Well, you're writing uname1, password1 and email1 to a file, separated with three spaces (and for what reason ever, three more spaces at the end of each line).
Use str_repeat to add as many spaces as you need: http://php.net/manual/de/function.str-repeat.php
Like this:
$stringData1 = $POST['uname1'] . str_repeat(" ", $longest_uname - strlen($POST['uname1']) + 1);
fwrite($fh, $stringData1);
$stringData1 = $POST['password1'] . str_repeat(" ", $longest_password - strlen($POST['password1']) + 1);
fwrite($fh, $stringData1);
$stringData1 = $POST['email1'] . str_repeat(" ", $longest_email - strlen($POST['email1']) + 1);
fwrite($fh, $stringData1);
You'll need to find out $longest_uname, $longest_password, $longest_email first by iterating through your array and finding the longest string for each of your columns.
If you don't need the last column to be right-padded with spaces, you can skip the "longest_email"-part.
EDIT: Of course the "tab"-solutions mentioned here will work, too, but only if the difference between the lengths of your strings in one column will not exceed one tab. Also the "substr(..., 14)"-method will work, but only if no string is longer than 14 characters ...